


No more a lion on your shield

by annathecrow



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, F/F, Female Characters, Guns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-23
Updated: 2014-07-23
Packaged: 2018-02-10 04:14:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2010546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annathecrow/pseuds/annathecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peggy Carter fought a war alongside a superhero. Susan Pevensie ruled a kingdom in another world. Both lost their loved ones before their time. Now they're building an organization to protect the world.<br/>A story of two extraordinary women, told in snippets and pieces.</p><p>... yeah, this is one of the weird ones. But hey, maybe it will amuse another person besides me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All That I Have

When Susan steps off the plane, nothing happens. It surprises her for a moment. A part of her expects a sign, something memorable, because this is the beginning of her new life and shouldn’t there be something...? But she stomps that part down, hard. It stinks of of wardrobes and royals and lions with puppet strings. She smiles, sharply, and keeps going.

“Wait, miss, your luggage!?” an airport attendant shouts after her as she passes the gaggle of passengers waiting for their things to be unloaded.

“This is all I have!” she swings her handbag and doesn’t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What can I say - my brain is a strange place, sometimes. I have a thing for strange crossovers, and I spend entirely too much time thinking about women in World War II. This pairing kind of... happened.
> 
> As for the story: I have an idea how their lives would go, but I'm just not good enough writet to build a solid plot and create a continuous story out of it. So, I'm doing what I do know - writing single scenes and short stories from various points of their lives. I'm using a list of prompts for some of these, but that's mostly because I need crutches sometimes.  
> The length of the snippets varies, but they're very short. The first chapter is my first (and last) attempt at a drabble, the longest is a little less than 1k words.
> 
> I keep trying to apologize for publishing this, but the truth is, this pairing is very dear to me, weird as it is. That's why I started writing this, and that's why I'm posting it. Maybe someone will like the idea, if not the writing.


	2. Spiral

Peggy notices her in the corner of her eye - dark hair and heart-shaped face, red lips and silk stockings. There is nothing special in that, just one of the working girls that rush by her on her way to the office. And yet. Peggy prides herself on her skill of reading people, and there is something... a gesture perhaps, an expression, a way of moving. Something that catches her eye and makes her ponder a girl she never sees closer than a hundred feet away.

But there are other things that bother her more - her job, her boss, the past and the future... so she sets the thought away, for now.

Susan learns to pick her out from the crowd of morning commuters - young, brown-haired woman, always prim, always elegant in her suit and her high heels. She entertains herself by making up stories about her - a secretary working for a billionaire; a spy; a war veteran of a resistance group; a superhero like Captain America and others from Peter’s comic books. Susan tells to herself it’s all just boredom, but she knows better. There is something different about the woman. Something that caught her eye the first time she saw her, something she can feel all the way from her bus seat, sixty feet away.

When Peggy sees the girl peering into the military surplus store window, it gives her a start. The boss is being exceptionally overbearing these days and she is feeling paranoid. Why would a plain office girl check a weapon display? It bothers her, and Peggy catches herself thinking about the girl again. Not all the time, not even close to that. But every now and then, the thought comes up. Had she seen her before? Is she someone from the war, maybe even from SSR?

But then she sees her near the store again, and she understands. From across the street, she watches her inspect the window display; how her eyes glaze over the ammo boxes and the stacks of rifles, how she slows down on the knives, and how her eyes stop on the handguns. As she passes, forty feet away, Peggy catches the reflection of the girl’s face in the glass. The expression is almost painfully familiar - nostalgia and wariness and frustration and longing, for power, for freedom, for a way to prove yourself to the world that ignores and ridicules you. Peggy laughs at herself. Look at her, projecting her own feelings onto strangers. If only the world gave her a chance...

Susan sees her walking past, with a small suitcase in hand an a spring in her gait she hadn’t seen before. She wonders what made her so happy - pehaps a promotion, or a meeting with a lover? It’s late in the evening - most of the workers went home by now and the streets are almost empty in this part of town. Susan would be gone by now, if only her boss hadn’t made her stay late and redo half of today’s work. The ruined plans rankled, but now another layer to the mystery of the elegant stranger lifts her spirits a little. She watches the woman walk past, barely twenty feet away, and wonders what is in her plans tonight.

When Peggy leaves the office, she’s almost floating. Going into action was a impulse, born out of the frustration with the cage she was shoved into after the war. From the first hit, she knew she was right. Even if she was killed, even if the higher-ups gave her hell over it... this was what she knew. This? This was what she was made for. And then the phone call, and the apology - oh, she’d be lying if she said she didn’t enjoy every second of it.

On an impulse, she crosses the street. It feels right, throwing away the last part of a well-worn, well-hated pattern. When she turns around the corner, she sees a familiar figure standing in front of a store. She doesn’t walk past this time.

“Have you picked one yet?” she asks her after a moment of silence, watching the young woman from the corner of her eye.

The girl looks at her quickly, blushing. “Not yet,” she replies lightly, and her smooth Oxford English loosens a knot in Peggy’s chest she didn’t know she had. “Do you have any recomendations?” There is a challenge in that reply, and Peggy takes it. “Not the revolver on the left - too heavy, and kicks like a mule. The middle one... a Luger? How did that even got here? I’d go with the Colt. Not my favorite, but it’s dependable and they made tons of them - it’s cheap as dirt, and there will always be enough spare parts if it breaks down.”

The girl looks at her, initial surprise quickly replaced by mirth. “You seem to know what you’re talking about!”

“A little,” Peggy replies, smug.

“Maybe you could help me, then?” the girl hedges. “I’m no expert on guns, and I can just imagine what the clerk will do the moment I ask him anything at all.” She grimaces, and Peggy laughs. “Oh, trust me, I know all about it.”

The girl extends her hand. “I’m Susan. Susan Pevensie.”

“Peggy Carter,” she replies and shakes it. She offers Susan her arm. “Let’s go, then!”

The girl, Susan, smiles and takes it.


	3. Mother Nature

It was raining. Again. Still. The sky was so dark it looked like evening, even though it was barely past noon. At least her shelter protected her from the rain. Susan watched as water dripped off the carefully laden branches and away, keeping her and her few possessions dry. A gun, a map and a transmitter-reciever the size of a lunchbox. One of SHIELD’s newest toys, courtesy of Stark Industries. Under other conditions, she’d feel at least vaguely honored to be the one to test it. Perhaps, if they didn’t drop her in the middle of... Canada, maybe?... with less than two hours’ warning.

“Survival exercise,” smiled Peggy a touch too cheerfully, handing her a small file. “Simple task. From the drop zone you trek to position A. then wait there for four days. Upon your arrival you report over the radio; again on the third day. On the fifth, you move to position B. You wait for the target, make the shot and move to the pick up location.”

“What about equipment?” Susan asked, suspiciously looking around her over the airstrip. She saw a handful of other agents and little else.

Peggy’s smile turned positively malicious. “Two days’ provisions, a gun and a radio. And congratulations! You get to test Howard’s new baby.” She handed her an angular leather case.

“Joy,” Susan replied, making a face.

Peggy touched her elbow and her expression grew more serious.

“Come on, Suze, you know I need you out of the basic training as fast as possible. Didn’t you tell me how you used to go camping in the forest all day when you were a child?” she winced the moment she realised what she said.

“Oh, trust me, I had enough cold wet nights sleeping under a tree to last me a lifetime,” Susan replied quickly, before Peggy could say anything. “But, for the name of the country, I won’t let you down, director Carter, sir!” she exagerated a salute, making a show of fumbling with the file and mock-dropping the radio.

Peggy bit her lip to keep herself from laughing aloud. “Clown,” she hissed under her breath. Then, just loud enough for the other agents to overhear, “Well then, junior agent Pevensie, I trust you will do your best on this exercise.”

“Yes sir,” she replied, only half-jokingly.

Peggy gave her a nod and left her to wait for the plane, ignoring the looks of the other agents.

A parachute drop, a long walk through damp forest and five days later she found herself on a small clearing in the middle of nowhere, Canada. Probably. Stark’s little toy held exactly for three minutes of the first radio report. Then it fizzed, sparked and gave up the ghost in a puff of smoke. Two hours after that, it started raining. She had the shelter up by then, but the dry wood ran out after a while and then it was just misery. Not only for the wet, and the cold, but also for the memories this place brought.

Susan checked her watch. Almost time to move. She stood up and stretched, feeling her cold joints creak in complaint. She gathered her gear and begun tearing down the shelter. It didn’t even remotely resemble the construction the ex-SOE instructor shown them, but Susan knew what she was doing, probably better than he did. There would be almost no evidence of a camp left behind, and none to identify her. She begun her track to the target position, going over the file in her head. Damn her if she was going to fail this exercise over something something as stupid as a missed instruction.

In the end, the deed itself was... underwhelming. She scouted the location and decided to swap the marked out position for another one - it was more convenient, and she didn’t fight the temptation to disobey the orders a little. The convoy came an hour early, surprising exactly noone. The mark turned out to be a figurine that held a strong likeness to Howard Stark, a touch she suspected she knew the author of. She smiled as she made the shot. The glass of the car shattered, the figurine’s head burst in a poof of stuffing, and she was gone before the guards raised an alarm. She made it to the pickup place with an hour to spare.

Which, of course, meant the plane arrived two hours late.

When they finally touched down on the SHIELD HQ airport landing strip, she didn’t want anything as much as a long hot bath.

To her surprise, Peggy was waiting for her, looking as elegant and put-together as always. Susan was suddenly painfully aware of her own appearance - dirty, sopping wet and yes, smelly.

“So,” Peggy asked lightly when she reached her. “How was the communing with Mother Nature?”

Susan glared at her. “Two words: Raw. Squirrel.”

“Ouch.” Peggy grimaced.

“Yeah.” Susan handed her the broken radio. “Tell Stark I’m going to kick his arse for this.”

“You can do that today if you want,” Peggy replied. “He’s on the base. We’re taking over The Club tonight, you should come.”

Susan sighed, gesturing expressively at her clothes.

“Please?” Peggy asked. “He brought a company this time. It’s going to be me, handful of strangers and a few boys from the Howling Commandos... I’ll need backup,” she admitted.

“All right,” Susan replied with a smile. “But you owe me a drink. A good one.”

“Deal.” Peggy smiled back. She turned to go. “Oh, and don’t forget you have to write a full mission report!” she thew over her shoulder.

“Slave driver!” Susan shouted at her back.

“Should’ve read the small print, agent Pevensie!” Peggy shouted back without turning. 


	4. Silence

It’s long past sunset when the door of her office clicks quietly and opens just enough to let a person slip through. Peggy stiffens instinctively, before she relaxes again when she recognizes the soft tread of female shoes on the floorboards. A cup is set on the desk next to her hand, and a creak of upholstery announces the person settling into the second chair in the office. Peggy doesn’t bother to look up from her paperwork, reaching for the cup and taking a long sip of the strong, sweet coffee within.

The room falls back into silence, interrupted only now and then by the sound of shuffled pages or a pencil scratching over paper.

“I swear, one more of these and I’m taking SHIELD and making it an independent country,” Peggy groans, straightening her back and running her hands through her hair.

“Please, don’t,” Susan chuckles. “Too much paperwork.”

“At least it wouldn’t be pointless paperwork! What am I supposed to do with these?” she shakes the offending sheets.

“May I?” Susan takes the papers and leafs through them. “Really? They’re still on it?” she sighs and shakes her head. “ I’ll take them off your back,” she tells Peggy and whips out a notebook, making notes as she goes through the letters.

“Thank you,” Peggy replies with feeling.

Susan looks up at her and smirks. “You know I’m just doing it for the sex.”

“What sex,” mutters Peggy bitterly.

“Precisely,” Susan says, making a face.

Peggy takes a sip of the coffee. “Maybe I should just let Howard build that ship he keeps raving about.”

Susan gives her a hurt look. “Et tu, Brute? Bad enough the whole Technology Division won’t stop babbling about it. Last time I caught Nicholas listening to him go. Nicholas, of all people!” she shakes her head with exagerated sadness.

Peggy just snorts and turns back to her paperwork.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written before Captain America 2 and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. added more info about SHIELDs buildings, so I improvised. Palmyra Atoll sounded like a nice place to build secret headquarters of secret organization...


End file.
